


Twelve Principles (of Jake Jensen)

by Stoic_Zee



Series: Amnesiacs Anonymous [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Crossover, Franklin Clay sees all, Jake Jensen is Steve Rogers, Jake Jensen is not Captain America, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-The Losers (Movie), Pre-The Losers (Movie), Steve Rogers is Captain America, Timeline What Timeline, except when women are trying to kill him, throat singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-12 18:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7117828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoic_Zee/pseuds/Stoic_Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Clay's job to know things about his men. No matter who they are.</p>
<p>(a.k.a. Col. Franklin Clay knows more about Captain America than Col. Nick Fury.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twelve Principles (of Jake Jensen)

Colonel Franklin Clay had the dubious honor of leading the Special Forces unit codenamed “The Losers.” There had been a team operating under that name since World War II though only the top brass was aware of the fact. The Losers, traditionally, consisted of the Army’s best, brightest, and otherwise craziest soldiers. Craziest was key. The Losers couldn’t function properly on other teams hence the nickname.

It was Clay’s job to handle these psychos and direct their unusual talents at the country’s enemies. And that meant it was his job to know as much about them as humanly possible. Luckily, Clay was good at his job.

For example, Clay knew exactly how Roque got the scar over his eye. Clay had been there, and a fight was not what he would call it.

Clay knew how Cougar earned his nickname. He had heard the story from the leader of Cougar’s previous unit before the man and the rest of the team had been wiped out. Cougar, stationed at a distance in his sniper’s nest, had been the only survivor.

Clay knew why Pooch was assigned to the Losers when by all appearances, the man was perfectly sane with a wife and a future waiting for him outside the army. Pooch only looked sane compared to the other Losers, and Clay was never going to forget it.

Then there were the things that Clay knew about Jensen. He was no Jensen-whisperer the way Cougar seemed to be, but Clay still knew things.

1) Jensen was a master at Disc Golf.

This was actually in Jensen’s file. How it had come up during a mission of a team that was _not_ the Losers, Clay still didn’t know. But apparently, if Disc Golf ever became an Olympic sport, then it was Jensen’s patriotic duty to win gold for the Americans, even if it required suspending him from duty for the duration.

_When Clay learned the truth about Jensen’s identity, one of Clay’s lesser regrets was that super-humans were banned from competing in the Olympics. Disc Golf had been added to the upcoming cycle of the summer games, and once Max was gone, Jensen would have been eligible to compete._

2) Jensen had hacked his own medical file.

Clay had learned this while providing cover fire as Jensen picked open an electronic lock. There had been some technical explanation that Clay couldn’t follow as to why Jensen needed a thin piece of metal, but the end result was their tech disassembling his glasses. Clay had seriously doubted the man’s intelligence at that moment because Clay definitely could not do any of the computer-stuff needed once they reached the other side of the door.

But apparently, Jensen had perfect vision. One of his eyes had been weak for a while when he was in college, but his eyesight had improved so much that he didn’t need glasses at all by the time he applied for the army. Jensen had then hacked his secure medical file and fiddled with his vision test scores so that he could get away with wearing what were apparently polarized sunglasses all the time. He claimed it helped to prevent eye-strain.

_It took an unreasonably long time for Clay to realize that Jensen could have made_ other _alterations to his official file. By the time he was presented with clear evidence of the fact, it was too late to make much of a difference._

3) Jensen could draw.

Jensen never drew when anyone else was around to watch, so Clay doubted that even Cougar knew about this hidden talent. Clay had only discovered it by accident. He had forgotten some filing and had to go back to base retrieve the papers. He had expected everyone else to already be gone for the weekend.

Jensen was still there, accidentally scaring the shit out of Clay, because he was making barely any noise. There was no chatter. No clickety-clack of computer keys. Just the quiet scritch-scratch of pencil on paper. Clay had stood there staring for a good five minutes, and Jensen never once lifted his head or otherwise acknowledged the colonel.

Clay knew how to sneak. A large portion of his life involved sneaking in and out of places. (Mostly into enemy bases and out of beds.) Clay managed to get close enough to sneak a peek at what Jensen was drawing.

The first thing he noticed was that Jensen had real talent. If he hadn’t gone into the army, and hadn’t pursued an education in computer science, then Jensen could have done very well for himself as an illustrator. The second thing he noticed was the fantastical subject matter: a man standing in a cyber-punk looking room and holding a sort of cube with the universe rotating above his head. Finally, he noticed that the picture was actually horrifying. The man—and there was something off about the man’s face—was watching the cube with slavish devotion as his body disintegrated into the field of stars above.

Clay never went looking for the drawing pad. If that was the sort of thing that lived in Jensen’s head, no wonder he was crazy.

_Clay learned from Jensen’s sister that his first counselor had suggested art therapy as a way to describe his emotions when words failed him. Jensen had stopped seeing the man after the first “creative” interpretation, but Jensen kept drawing, and now there were dozens of books.  The images were worse in color. Clay hadn’t realized “Red Skull” was so literal. But there were beautiful drawings in the pages too—Jenna holding her newborn daughter and the legendary Peggy Carter in a red dress—so Jensen’s head wasn’t completely terrible. He was still crazy though._

4) Jensen always forgot his gun outside of combat.

Clay had heard it straight from Jensen’s previous commander, but he hadn’t really believed that a Spec Ops soldier couldn’t keep a gun with him until Clay saw it for himself.  Make no mistake, on missions, it was never a problem. He had his primary weapon, his side-arm, a knife, and a back-up knife. But any extras he acquired, he traded as soon as possible or lost them gambling to the Losers.

On base, on leave, or anywhere that was not in the middle of the field, Jensen left his gun in a different room, or in the car, or anywhere that was not in immediate grabbing distance. It would be a problem, if Jensen didn’t room with Cougar on most missions and therefore have immediate access to _his_ back-up weapons.

Clay could never understand it. Neither could any of Jensen's previous commanding officers—the ones that were willing to admit to Jensen’s existence anyway.

_Later, Clay learned the cause of Jensen’s passive-aggressive gun-avoidance and really wished he hadn’t._

5) Jensen was not a fan of glaciers.

The Losers were typically assigned missions in climates that were not necessarily warm, because the desert got cold at night, but in areas that rarely saw snow. Still, there were always exceptions.

On one such mission, Pooch and Roque were positioned together near the road and probable transport route, Cougar had been forced to find a sniper’s nest in an actual tree and was not happy about it, and Clay and Jensen were even further away so the tech could get a steady signal.

Clay had been enjoying the snowfall. It was cold, but he grew up in Montana. Pooch, Roque, and Cougar had all grumbled about the weather but knew their jobs. Jensen hadn’t said a word either for or against. He hadn’t actually said much since they arrived, and Clay knew it wasn’t out of respect for radio silence.

“No winter weather trivia?” Clay had asked eventually.

Jensen had unclenched his jaw and said, “Sometimes I dream that I’ve fallen asleep and been swept up by a glacier, and when it melts, I wake up and learn that I’ve been frozen for a hundred years and everyone I knew and loved was dead.”

Clay had stared in disbelief, but Jensen didn’t seem to notice, focused as he was on his monitoring duties. Then Clay took a closer look at Jensen and realized the man wasn’t shivering because of the cold, the same way his white-knuckled grip on the computer wasn’t to keep his hands warm. Jensen was terrified and had been since they settled into their temporary position in the snowbank.

When they got back to the States, Clay submitted a formal request that his team not be assigned missions in artic regions. Among his reasons listed were the lack of previously established information networks and the difficulty of blending in with their current roster. Nowhere did he mention Jensen’s fear of ice and snow nor did he mention the request to the Losers

Jensen’s sister sent him a fruit basket anyway.

_The first year after Max, when all of the Losers celebrated Christmas together for the first time, Clay was surprised to see Jake take his niece out sledding before dinner. It was obvious from tension in his frame that even something so simple had bad associations for Jensen. James noticed him looking and explained that fear had never stopped Jake from doing anything. Clay realized that explained so much._

6) Jensen’s musical talents extended to _katajjaq_.

On one cluster-fuck of a mission, Clay, Roque, and Jensen ended up captured together. This was unusual and unfortunate for a variety of reasons. The biggest problem was that after Clay and Roque, Jensen was best at strategic and tactical planning, so he was usually the leader of rescue missions when the CO and XO were both unavailable. (The best example was that one time when Jensen had to invade an enemy base to rescue all four of them and had succeeded, which both terrified and embarrassed the other Losers in turn.)

The next biggest problem was that Clay and Roque were stuck with _Jensen_ , and Jensen talked when there were no other distractions.

Even worse, the group that had captured them weren’t exactly top-tier. So instead of taping Jensen’s mouth shut (or sewing his mouth shut as occasionally happened) they were just letting him talk.

“He’s got to stop to breathe,” said one of the guards.

“Not necessarily,” said Jensen latching on to the comment. “Have you ever heard of _katajjaq_?”

_Katajjaq_ , also known as Inuit throat singing, was a musical form that involved producing rhythmic noise on both the exhale _and_ the inhale. It was an art traditionally performed by pairs of women, and the songs usually only lasted two to three minutes. Jensen, by himself, serenaded them for ten long minutes.

When Jensen finally stopped for a real breath, Roque looked at their guard and said, “If you have any mercy, you will shoot me now.”

Cougar took the opportunity to shoot the guards instead. Thankfully, Jensen was too busy escaping to perform his encore.

_Clay tried not to think about the throat singing incident. He had definitely left it out of the official report. Unfortunately, it was one of the things that haunted him at night, especially after he heard Jensen’s girl tell Jolene and Aisha exactly how long Jensen could hold his breath._

7) Jensen was the human equivalent of the Energizer Bunny.

Clay had had an unfortunate run-in with one of his ex-girlfriends and woke up the next morning with a note pinned to his chest explaining what had happened. It had also mentioned that the team had met Jensen’s girl, who was actually an international assassin codenamed: Winter Soldier, and that he and Jensen had gotten shot at some point by someone.

According to the note, as team leader, it was Clay’s responsibility to question Jensen’s girl and figure out whether or not the Losers would die in an attempt to remove Jensen from a possibly abusive relationship with a legendary killer. He would have the opportunity to ask James that afternoon at the Linwoods.

The reality was so much worse, Clay wondered if he hadn’t been rescued from that operating table after all.

Apparently, instead of going on leave, Jensen would visit his sister and niece, hook up with his girl, and then raid and destroy whatever Hydra facility had come up on their radar. Occasionally, they would mix things up by targeting AIM or one of the Ten Rings’ compounds. But generally they went after Hydra. Hydra was apparently on every continent _and_ in every intelligence organization, _and_ they took their two-heads motto very seriously, so Jensen and James managed to stay busy.

Clay had never noticed. No one had ever noticed. (Except Cougar the Jensen-whisperer, apparently.) But Jensen had, for years, run Spec Ops missions and then, when he was supposed to be on break recovering and gathering his energy, went and ran even more dangerous missions with his super-assassin boyfriend. Sometimes they even met up during lulls in actual missions when there was a convenient target nearby, or sometimes they just met up, but Clay tried not to think about that reluctant confession too hard.

The most Clay could do was tell them to be careful and threaten to tell someone, SHIELD, probably, if things got out of hand and Jensen showed up unable to work. James had tensed, Jensen had laughed, and Clay was left to quietly marvel at Jensen’s endurance.

_The first time Jensen and James had prepared for one of their Hydra-raids after the Losers went underground, Clay had finally been able to offer back up. Aisha hadn’t been too interested, saying Hydra was no worse than any other terrorist organization, until Jensen explained that they were targeting a SHIELD site that was secretly a Hydra location. It was the first time Clay had been okay with being labeled a terrorist._

8) Jensen didn’t scar.

Between Jensen’s job and his off-duty hobbies, the Losers' resident tech was injured on a fairly regular basis. Still he always bounced back quickly and never complained about lingering injuries except to bum candy bars off Roque.

Clay only noticed the abnormality because the doctor had left two of Jensen’s x-rays up when an emergency page called him away. One x-ray showed the current injury to Jensen’s leg and the second was from a previous visit. Beyond the obvious, the major difference between the two x-rays was in the older picture there was a hair line fracture, in the newer picture it was gone. It had healed without leaving any evidence of the break.

It had taken some subtle examining of Jensen—he didn’t want word getting back to Jensen’s girl that Clay was interested—but he eventually realized that Jensen didn’t have any scars at all. He had definitely been injured enough to have scars. His mouth should have been a wreck from being sewn shut more than once. Clay had puzzled over it for weeks.

Clay had eventually questioned Sam Wilson, who was Jolene’s cousin and had flown with Jenna’s husband, Riley, when they were in Air Force, and who was less likely to stab him with a fork than Jensen’s sister, and heard the story of Em’s accident, and how the emergency personnel thought she would never walk again, but now she was the star player of her eight-and-under soccer league. Jensens were apparently good healers, and it was probably a mutant thing they wanted kept quiet.

_After Jake and Jenna explained exactly how Jake had become one of the Jensens, Clay tried to find a subtle way to ask Jenna if Em was actually Jensen’s and not Riley’s but remembered that woman resented him on a good day and asked Jensen instead. The answer was no. Jake and Em had the same blood type, and that Jake had probably pumped a few_ liters _of blood into her on the day of the accident, which had saved her life and her legs. Clay promised to keep that quiet too._

9) Jensen had an eidetic memory.

After the first time Jensen “lost” his phone, Clay asked if need the Losers’ numbers for his new one. Jensen had given the slightly hysterical laugh that usually accompanied mass destruction. He knew all the numbers. He had perfect memory recall.

Clay occasionally used the television to watch things other than cheap porn or the news. He had seen a documentary on people with photographic memory—eidetic memory it was called—and he knew that their lives were usually pretty terrible. All the bad things that normal people forgot, they would remember just as strongly as if it had just happened, and that led to all sorts of mental problems like serious depression.

Clay was pretty sure that Jensen wasn’t lying, so he had snapped something about remembering his gun from time to time, and gone off to drink away the shock. Clay could barely live with his alcohol-laden memories. It was hard to believe that Jensen could live with his in perfect high-definition and surround-sound.

_The real kicker was that Jensen remembered everything perfectly up to a point. Everything about who Jensen was before he woke up in the coma-ward was guesswork and hearsay and still frames drawn in a notebook. Jensen could remember everything that happened to him, except what he wanted to know._

10) Jensen could out-drink a whale.

The Losers _weren’t_ in Cuba, no sir. But if they had been, they might have taken advantage of a bar Clay had visited the last time he _wasn’t_ in Cuba. Pooch, Roque, and Jensen might have been dragged into a drinking contest with some of the locals, and Cougar might have bet on Jensen winning.

Clay didn’t know what Cougar was thinking because Roque and Pooch both knew how to hold their liquor, and Jensen rarely had more than two shots before switching to a beer he’d nurse all night long. Clay had put his money on Roque, in a show of support, and to remind Pooch that he was still technically their designated driver.

Roque had to stop before he passed out, earning himself a respectable 4th place. Jensen won, defeating the local drinking champ, a literal giant who was a good seven feet tall and twice Jensen’s size in all other directions. Cougar was too discrete to count his money there, but he was pleased enough to let Jensen use him as a crutch on the way out the door.

In the morning, Clay had been further astounded to see Jensen was the first one up and making coffee without any sign of a hangover.

“Did you puke it all up last night?” asked Clay.

“One percent of adults in the U.S. struggle with bulimia at some point in their lives,” said Jensen. “It’s a serious medical condition and those suffering deserve our respect and understanding.”

Clay gave that factoid all the consideration he could muster after a post-mission night of drinking. “Jensen, shut up and give me coffee.”

_With his metabolism at a low ebb, Jensen could manage a decent buzz. He admitted it wasn’t worth the expense of the alcohol most of the time. Pooch permanently assigned Jensen as designated driver, but Clay quickly reassigned Pooch when Jensen took distracted driving to a whole new level. Outside of combat, Jensen was never to be allowed in the driver’s seat. The realization that Jensen owned and drove a motorcycle did not reassure any of them._

11) Jensen hated Captain America.

Jensen was probably the only U.S. soldier in the modern army that hated Captain America. He had lists; he had power point presentations; he had serious critiques of 1940’s propaganda films, he had multiple, multi-hour rants. Jensen had put a lot of time, effort, and serious research into his dislike of the national hero.

Unsurprisingly, his attitude got him in a lot of trouble with the other soldiers on base.

The Losers had learned to let it go. Jensen was as stubborn as mule when he settled on something, and none of them had the sheer energy to try to argue him down.

_Clay and the others considered it a great irony that Jensen’s girl, James, was really James Buchanan Barnes, Captain America’s best friend. Worse, Aisha and Jensen bonded over their mutual dislike of the ultimate symbol of American propaganda. When Jensen killed Captain America on national television, no one could say they were surprised._

12) Jensen’s family was a textbook example of hereditary insanity.

The Losers were light on family as a whole. None of them were married, except Pooch. Roque grew up with a father and a brother, the latter of whom was dead and the former in jail. Clay’s parents were both long buried and his relationship status was complicated. Cougar’s family was large, but he was in self-imposed exile after the things he had seen and done. Then there was Jensen’s family.

According to public record, John Jensen Jr. and Jennifer Jensen nee Johnson had had three children, Jenna Jensen, John Jensen III, and Jacob Jensen. Clay could not imagine what possessed them to pass names like those onto their children, but it was the first sign that something was not right with the Jensens _mentally_.

The family was abruptly reduced when Mr. and Mrs. Jensen had died in a car crash, and John was signed into a long-term coma ward. Jenna and Jake rattled around their family home alone until Jenna’s fiancé, one Riley Houlihan, came back from his tour and promptly married into ~~the crazy~~ the Jensens.

The Jensen-Houlihan family increased by one when Eleanor Margaret “Em” Houlihan was born and decreased by one when John Jensen died of complications arising from pneumonia. He had never regained consciousness after the car accident.

Ten days before Jacob Jensen transferred into the Losers, Riley Houlihan was killed in action, and Jenna was left with one daughter and one of two brothers. No husband. No parents. And this was the reason Jenna Houlihan hated Clay because Jake had promised to leave the army if he and the Losers didn’t work out. Spoiler: Jake and the Losers worked out pretty well.

After the Losers’ first real mission together, Clay received the most frightening phone call of his life (and from a woman he had never slept with). It had promised him unimaginable torment and a gruesome death if the Losers ever came back from a mission without Jake. This was a serious threat since base chatter revealed the last team to come home without Jensen had died one-by-one in increasingly bizarre and terrible accidents.

Following the phone call, Clay concluded that Jensen came by his crazy honestly.

_After the reveal, Clay was still having trouble believing that Jake wasn’t related to Jenna. They were like peas in a pod. They clung to each other with a fierceness that he had only seen in siblings,_ close _siblings. Sam Wilson, who was in heated competition with Cougar and James for title of Em’s second-favorite uncle, caught him staring at the fake siblings and gave him some free advice. “It’s not the family you’re born with, it’s the family you choose.” Then he smirked and added, “Welcome to the fold, Col. Clay.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children. --Sam Levenson


End file.
